Uninvited from family functions

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JLCecilia

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So, I made the mistake of posting on FB (I know, I know) that DS was battling chronic staph infections. I normally never post about our family, esp illness b/c other people’s play-by-play documentation of illness gives me the willies. But, it was a moment of weakness and I was exasperated. I have since deleted the post (even though it’s too late now) and deactivated my account.

Extended family saw it and decided that they did not want us to come to the family gathering a couple weeks ago. DH got more news from his mom today that our cousin would be hosting a bday party for her son next month, but we would not be invited. Chances are, we will be asked not to come to the family gathering next month either. This year is MIL’s turn to host Christmas and she has threatened that if her sister’s family continues in this manner, she just won’t host.

Oh, I can appreciate their concern. I’ve never made a public announcement, but I’m sure I’ve lamented about our struggle with this for the last 7 years. I’m sure, too, that on many occasions, our family has attended functions with active infections. We always keep them covered with a bandage and they’re normally under clothing, so we feel okay about it.

I just wish MIL would learn to keep this stuff to herself. DH gets so upset, and I don’t blame him. His family means the world to him and to be ostracized on account of my stupidity, I’m just ashamed of the consequences I’ve brought on my family. We don’t attend too many bday parties anyway just b/c we’re not able to host extended family for OUR kids, so it’s not a big deal. I just wish MIL and her sister had said nothing at all, we’d have been none the wiser.
 
Does your doctor have concerns about your son attending fuction with outbreaks of staph going on? Is it okay if he has the sores bandaged, or are they still contagious. I know staph is really contagious and can be very difficult to get rid of. I once was a sub teacher and I subbed for the same teacher 15 times in one year, sometimes for a week at a time, because she had a staph infection she couldn’t get rid of. If your doctor has concerns about your family spreading staph to others, then I think your family is being reasonable, however, if you are taking the recommended precautions, and your doctor thinks it is alright, then maybe you can explain that to your family?
 
You may need to follow up with some education for the family members.

They probably don’t realize that about 20% (that’s a conservative estimate) of them are colonized themselves. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16362880

Your son and your immediate family are likely all colonized and even if he doesn’t have an active infection it is still there. Are they going to just keep you away forever? Not only is that unreasonable it’s just plain ignorant.

I’m sorry you’re going through this, but likely you’re going to have to do some damage control and educate your family members. I also agree with a PP who mentioned asking your son’s Dr when they think it is reasonable to be around other people. If the physician thinks it is ok then you can also present them with that.
 
I know I have been hard-hearted about one of my co-workers who refuses to stay home when she’s sick b/c I know I’ll take it home to my family and have to miss a LOT of work for it. But I’ve had to make my peace with that. My MIL attended our family’s Thanksgiving following hospitalization for pneumonia and she was coughing up crud while she was there. Our SIL missed Christmas one year b/c she had the flu. It gave me the willies being around her husband and son who came b/c they very well could have been contagious as well. People get sick, it happens, and we don’t always avoid contact with others to the extreme caution that perhaps we should.

I could be wrong, but I haven’t found that, within our family, we have spread it through contact. I think it’s systemic and infections just manifest on their own. I use the same shower as my boys (that I NEVER clean) and neither I nor the other 2 boys have had an infection in months. They all rough house and wrestle and have plenty of contact with one another as well. And I don’t rely on my dr’s opinion b/c he pretty well leaves treatment and precaution standards up to us.

I guess our family is assuming that we will have an active outbreak at the time of the family gathering or that we are contagious 24/7, which we very well could be. But those are pretty tough standards to live by.
 
PhiloMed, thank you for the info. Oh, believe me, I’d like to inform them, but I’ll have to really contemplate how I can do it charitably. In my extensive research, I read about one lady whose husband went through the rigorous decolonization process WITHOUT success. My DH saw an infectious disease doc who prescribed the decolonization process for him, but he has a hard time taking medicine and gave up about halfway through. I also believe it was negligent for her to prescribe this remedy JUST to him, given that everyone in our household has had it and probably should have gone through the process.

Oh, I pray that time will heal this wound.
 
Monicad, no, I really did not expect DH’s family to take it the extreme that they did. Our cousin took our case (what little she knows of it) to a friend who’s spouse is a dr and got her ‘take’ on it which turned out to be completely wrong, but SHE doesn’t know that. I doubt at this point there will be much recovery b/c I don’t get the impression from her (or her mom) that they will quickly change their thoughts about this now that they have made up their minds. Only time will tell.
 
So,* being totally honest here*, if I found out that someone at a party had an active Staph infection, I would stay away from them. And I wouldn’t be too happy that they came to the party.

Remember, as Monicad said, they aren’t trying to be mean. They are simply protecting themselves.
 
maryjk said:
So,* being totally honest here*, if I found out that someone at a party had an active Staph infection, I would stay away from them. And I wouldn’t be too happy that they came to the party.

Remember, as Monicad said, they aren’t trying to be mean. They are simply protecting themselves.
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Being totally honest, I would feel this way also. It’s a bit different for adults getting together as they have minimal contact with each other and are generally aware to take precautions not to share it around.

Kids on the other hand share germs through contact in so many different ways and aren’t generally always being aware to take precautions.

You said your whole family had had the infection so it must be pretty contagious. It’ll eventually resolve and life can return to normal for your family. You don’t want to put your family offside by not taking their concerns and precautions into consideration. They won’t forget that quickly and it may cause long term friction under the surface.
 
Yeah, we’re just going to have to figure out where they draw the line. Like I said, they’re assuming that we’ll have an active outbreak at the time of the gathering or that we’re all contagious 24/7. If this is the standard they’re going to hold us to, we may be bowing out of family functions altogether.
 
I just struggle with how to tell my kids why we can’t see our family or play with their cousins anymore. I struggle with being overly candid with them. I guess as long as they don’t know about weekends at the lake or bday parties, they won’t know they’re missing out, but I know it will eventually come up in conversation.

You are all right, I need to stop being so defensive and argumentative! Worst character trait, I swear.
 
JLCecilia said:
Yeah, we’re just going to have to figure out where they draw the line. Like I said, they’re assuming that we’ll have an active outbreak at the time of the gathering or that we’re all contagious 24/7. If this is the standard they’re going to hold us to, we may be bowing out of family functions altogether.
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You said, at the beginning of the thread, that you are sure that you have attended *many *functions while having active infections.

Sorry, but I don’t think they are being unreasonable. In reality, you have shown them that they can’t trust you to stay home when there is an active infection. So the next best option is to simply not invite you, at all.

Edit to add:
What do you tell the kids? We can’t go because little Johnny is sick. We don’t want to take the chance that we might infect someone.
 
Uhh…are we talking about MRSA? That’s serious stuff!

This is an area where reasonable people can disagree. Personally, as an adult I would spend time with MRSA adults, but like a previous poster mentioned, the whole situation changes with kids.
 
These standars could mean a major life shift for us. DH is a sports lover and I know that he was looking forward to having our boys play every sport they showed interest in, but how could this even be a viable option for us now? They may have one outbreak after another for weeks on end, or go for months without it. They could never be reliable team members if they had to sit out every game that occurred during an outbreak. I even had the extreme thought of how much school they might have to miss equating to us having to homeschool. That’s given that we ever reach a point that we’re financially able for me to quit working. I don’t think our children suffer as frequent outbreaks as DH and I do, but if we really, truly abide by the strictest standard, wow, there aren’t even words.
 
I guess b/c we’ve dealt with it for so long and have grown accustomed to rolling with the punches, it’s easy to become cavalier about the whole thing. I know DH would like for me to Clorox the entire house, but I could make a FT job of doing that and I’m just not convinced that that’s the answer.

BlueEyedLady, you have a valid point about adults vs. kids.
 
maryjk said:
Edit to add:
What do you tell the kids? We can’t go because little Johnny is sick. We don’t want to take the chance that we might infect someone.
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Please don’t do this. Chronically ill children don’t need the burden of being (knowing they are) the reason the whole family is not able to go to a fun activity. It is probably tough enough for Johnny to have the issue itself.
 
JLCecilia said:
These standars could mean a major life shift for us. DH is a sports lover and I know that he was looking forward to having our boys play every sport they showed interest in, but how could this even be a viable option for us now? They may have one outbreak after another for weeks on end, or go for months without it. They could never be reliable team members if they had to sit out every game that occurred during an outbreak. I even had the extreme thought of how much school they might have to miss equating to us having to homeschool. That’s given that we ever reach a point that we’re financially able for me to quit working. I don’t think our children suffer as frequent outbreaks as DH and I do, but if we really, truly abide by the strictest standard, wow, there aren’t even words.
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:eek: Sports??? With MRSA?

When I was in school, we had to have a physical to play sports, and a communicable disease that was spread by contact would have disqualified a student.

Yikes, when I worked at a nursing home, residents with MRSA even had their laundry done separately from everyone else. If I found out that a child with MRSA was playing a contact sport with my child, I would complain to the coach, school, school board, health department, and whoever else I could. And if this were allowed and my child got infected…well, it’s a good thing I’m in law school.
 
BlueEyedLady said:
Uhh…are we talking about MRSA? That’s serious stuff!

This is an area where reasonable people can disagree. Personally, as an adult I would spend time with MRSA adults, but like a previous poster mentioned, the whole situation changes with kids.
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Yes, it is serious.

If you have MRSA, while in the hospital, the nurses gown up before they go into your room. And gowning up isn’t just a gown. Gloves and a mask are included. Heck they won’t allow a piece of paper to come into the room and then go back out.

Sorry, but this isn’t an infection that someone should be cavalier with. This is serious stuff.

And sports? That would be out of the question.
 
12345678 said:
Please don’t do this. Chronically ill children don’t need the burden of being (knowing they are) the reason the whole family is not able to go to a fun activity. It is probably tough enough for Johnny to have the issue itself.
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Precisely. With our family size and our proclivity to illness (oftentimes not even staph-related), it has become commonplace to cancel or postpone our plans. Sometimes it feels as though we can never really make plans at all. Best just not to tell the kids at all about a function until the day of so they won’t know or be disappointed if they have to miss. Constantly feeding them this line will quickly get old. It’s one thing to miss out on an occasional drop-of-the-hat gathering, but DH and I are really going to have to amp it up to make Thanksgiving and Christmas special without extended family.

I don’t doubt that our in-laws (MIL, FIL, BIL and their wives) would bow out of extended family gatherings as well just to be with our kids and make those times special with us. Even if means the added burden of cooking and hosting in our cramped little shoebox, I think they may go for it.
 
Just because someone has had a MRSA infection at some point in their life doesn’t mean they can’t participate in normal community activities once the active infection clears.

I think what the OP was getting at is that this is going to be a tremendous burden on her children if everyone sees them as being constantly contagious.

In some communities, the colonization rates for MRSA can approach 10% or higher. There’s no utility in screening for colonizers. It’s not like a nursing home or healthcare facility.

To the OP, I again encourage you to provide some reasonable information to your family about this. If what we see here on the boards is a sampling of what the general community knows then there is a lot of learning to be done.
 
PhiloMed said:
Just because someone has had a MRSA infection at some point in their life doesn’t mean they can’t participate in normal community activities once the active infection clears.

I think what the OP was getting at is that this is going to be a tremendous burden on her children if everyone sees them as being constantly contagious.

In some communities, the colonization rates for MRSA can approach 10% or higher. There’s no utility in screening for colonizers. It’s not like a nursing home or healthcare facility.

To the OP, I again encourage you to provide some reasonable information to your family about this. If what we see here on the boards is a sampling of what the general community knows then there is a lot of learning to be done.
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We aren’t talking about in general, we are talking about when an infection is active. As maryjk pointed out, the OP has already shown she can’t be trusted to consider the wellbeing of others.

I mean, c’mon. She needs to be as concerned with the health of others as she is her kid’s feelings.
 
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